June 5 is the memorial of St. Boniface.
“Wynfrith” (known to us as "St. Boniface") was born between 672 and 680, in what is now southern England. His parents were Anglo-Saxon Christians, probably from the lower nobility. When Wynfrith was a child, Benedictine monks founded a monastery in nearby Exeter. Wynfrith wanted to be one of the monks’ young oblates. His father agreed after he credited the monks’ prayers for recovery from a serious illness. In gratitude, he donated Wynfrith, not yet seven years old, to the monastery. The young boy proved to be a promising student and was admitted to full membership in the monastic community by the age of 14.
Around the age of 22, in pursuit of a better education, Wynfrith moved to a different monastery further east in Nursling. He studied interpretation of Scripture under the king’s ecclesiastical secretary, and was ordained a priest at the age of 30. By 713, he was chosen to carry messages from King Ine to the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning a political rebellion in Wessex.
Wynfrith then told his abbot that he had been called to be a missionary. After months of prayer and persuasion, in 716, the monastery allowed Wynfrith to undertake a missionary journey. He and a few other monks traveled to Frisia (now known as the Netherlands). Upon arrival, they found that the Frisian duke had reverted to paganism, destroyed the churches, and re-instituted the pagan cults. The monks spent four months in Frisia assessing the potential for future missions, and they then returned to Nursling.
In 718, Wynfrith left for Rome and spoke with Pope Gregory II about his interest in missions. Pope Gregory wanted Wynfrith to be called “Boniface,” a name that remained with him from then on. On May 15, 719, the Pope dispatched Boniface “to make a report on the savage peoples of Germany” and to teach “those peoples who are still in the bonds of infidelity”.
Boniface and his party crossed Bavaria and entered Thuringia, a region of what is now Germany which had been annexed by the Franks but which knew little of Christianity. After his initial arrival, he did not remain there long. Receiving news that a new missionary effort in Frisia had become possible, he left to join the experienced English missionary Willibrord in Frisia and became Willibrord’s apprentice for two years. Boniface then returned to Germany to complete the work he had promised to the Pope.
He built a German monastery at Amoneburg. He and his monks preached around the countryside, beside “preaching crosses.” He then sent his report to the pope. In response, Boniface was summoned back to Rome and, on November 30, 722, he became a missionary bishop without a fixed see.
After his visit to Rome, he returned to the edges of pagan Germany, around Mainz and Cologne. While that part of Germany had been Christianized in the fourth and fifth centuries, the religious schools there had become poor in quality. The little theological education received by the existing clergy is evident in Boniface's correspondence, which mentions such instances as a priest who, not knowing Latin, unintentionally baptized someone "in nomine patria et filia" (in the name of the fatherland and the daughter). Boniface faced a divided and sometimes heathenized church and pagan religions, including Bortharians who worshiped Thor, the god of thunder. There was idol worship, fortune-telling, sorcery, and even human sacrifice among the pagans (Letters XX, XXIX, XXXIII).
In contrast, Boniface and his monks, nuns and clergy lived according to their faith and the Psalms they sang, and people were won to the faith. Boniface often sought books for his own use and books to be copied for his clergy and for monasteries. He carried his own books with him wherever he went, reading the Bible and singing Psalms and hymns, giving alms to the poor.
Beginning in 727, Boniface’s correspondence fell silent for 5 years. During that time, Europe, and especifically the Frankish Kingdom, faced threats of Moslem invasion. Berbers and Arabs had held most of Iberia since 711 and had moved toward Burgundy by 725. In the words of biographer John Cyril Sladden:
"Both directly and indirectly, the Moslem threat overshadowed everything else. One could, to be sure, believe that the call to convert the Germans was an important part of the Christian answer to that threat. But the threat itself meant that the vocation had to be carried out with almost every normal advantage and encouragement removed."
The risk of invasion continued until Charles Martel’s victory at the Battle of Poitiers in 732. The following year, Syrian born Pope Gregory III promoted Boniface to the role of missionary archbishop without a fixed see, and sent him the pallium (Letter XX). A few years later, in 737, Boniface again traveled to Rome, returning the following year with an expanded description of his territory and clear authority to establish Church organization with six bishops working under him. He began to draw the diverse Germanic Church together into one structure. By 742, he was much involved in Church moral reform.
In the course of his ministry, Boniface won more than 100,000 people to Christianity. He ordained more than 300 clergy and formed monasteries with more than 2,000 monks and nuns. In his day, he was already called the "Apostle of Germany." Twentieth century English historian Christopher Dawson said that St. Boniface “had a deeper influence on the history of Europe than any Englishman who has ever lived,” carrying Romano-Christian civilization beyond the furthest reaches of the Roman Empire. Always, correspondence with men and women he knew in England, as well as correspondence with the popes, helped to sustain him.
In 744, Boniface built a monastery at Fulda, which was in a valley deep within the forest near Mainz. The monastery at Fulda became his place of retreat. In 746, Mainz became the center of his archbishopric, although the city did not officially become a metropolitan see until after Boniface’s death.
After Easter, 754, the elderly archbishop and 50 followers journeyed to Frisia to perform confirmations. While camped by the river, at first daylight on June 5, 754, the group was attacked by unknown assailants. All were killed. Boniface was entombed in the monastery chapel in Fulda, where his shrine remains.
Bibliography:
Barlow, Frank, "The English Background", published in Timothy Reuter, ed., The Greatest Englishman: Essays on St. Boniface and the Church at Crediton
Boniface, The Letters of Saint Boniface
Greenaway, George William, Saint Boniface: Three Biographical Studies for the Twelfth Centenary Festival
Noble, "Introduction" to The Letters of Saint Boniface (Records of Western Civilization Series) Columbia University Press
Riché, Pierre, The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe
Sladden, John Cyril, Boniface of Devon: Apostle of Germany
An Earlier Post with a Quote from St. Boniface:
Reflections on St. Boniface, Blindness and Our Lenten Fast
Picture: St. Boniface baptizing and St. Boniface's martyrdom, illustrated from the sacramentary at Fulda, 11th century, from the website of Women for Faith and Family.
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